Category: Uncategorized (page 6 of 11)

Benjamin and I checked out a few new places last weekend in and around Pleasantville.

We began our day with espresso and chocolate croissants at Black Cow Coffee. Both of these were delicious, and the cafe offered some fun ‘people watching’ too. My favorite was the girl curled up in the corner reading her YA novel. I’m still a sentimental sap of a former teacher. I love to see kids reading. She looked comfortable, relaxed, and content to be alone. I liked to imagine that she was also confident, smart, and kind, and that teachers everywhere would have classrooms filled with students like her. I can dream.

After living by the motto, “life’s short, eat dessert first,” we walked across the street to the Iron Horse Grill for lunch only to discover that it wasn’t open until dinner. Google dropped the ball on that one, but we took it as a sign to try the nearby Irish pub. Alas, these doors were closed too, but as we were peering into the window like lost puppies, a nice gentleman approached us.

“They’re closed,” he said, “For good, unfortunately. It’s sad. The guy just shut his doors and he was gone. I used to get really good burgers here. It was a real family owned place, ya know? It’s sad. No one knows what happened.”

We agreed that it was sad when ma and pa businesses had to shut down. Then, the nice man introduced himself as Bob, and when we asked him to suggest a place to go for lunch, he said, “Oh, you have to go to Le Jardin Du Roi. They have a great menu and you can sit outside in their garden. It’s just down the road in Chappaqua. Take you 10 minutes.”

Something about the way he pronounced the restaurant made me ask him if he spoke French. He answered playfully, “Oui, je parle Francais.” Of course we shared with him how much we enjoyed Paris and how much more we’d like to see in France. Bob and his wife have friends there, so they go every year. Lucky Bob and his wife. We ended the conversation thanking him, and we headed to lunch.

Normally at French restaurants, we try the traditional mussels and frites or a croque monsieur, and we order wine, but the waitress suggested the Bloody Mary’s, and well, we are big fans of these. We drank them spicy, and the bartender had a heavy hand. Off to good start! For food, we gravitated toward our roots, of sorts. I went for the fish tacos (because I am from Florida, well, half from Florida anyway) and Benjamin ordered the pulled pork sandwich (because he’s of Austrian heritage and they like meat-ha ha). We loved every bite.

The atmosphere in the restaurant was also perfect. It was cool and dark, like a French place should be. Lots of people were sitting outside in the garden, and we vowed to come back on a cooler day to try the more traditional fare and eat al fresco. Lovely!

The fun continued when we went to see a matinee at The Jacob Burns Film Center. What a great place! The center has multiple floors with several theaters. I believe it is an historic building, at least it looks this way from the outside, but the inside is completely modern. Our theater was on the top floor. The seats were 1950’s orange and comfortable. It was a little hot up there (old building and weak air conditioning), but I liked it because I am usually freezing in theaters.

We saw “Don’t Think Twice,” Mike Birbiglia’s film about an improv comedy group. When one of the members of the group gets called for an audition (for what is supposed to be like SNL), the others are forced to deal with this change. They have to face their individual creative goals. Emotions fly all over the place, and watching it made me realize that maybe yeah, there are interesting storylines that focus on artists and how they do what they do. Given that I am always thinking about collaboration, or the ups and downs of the creative process, it was motivating to watch “Don’t Think Twice.”

Finally, Benjamin and I ended our date day back at home by choosing another movie for a double feature. We scrolled through our ‘to watch’ list and landed on “Sing Street.” What a charming movie! It’s about a boy who wants to impress a girl by saying he’s in a band. He gets together with some schoolmates and they call their band, Sing Street. The movie is set in Ireland in 1985 when MTV music videos were just hitting, so the boys make music videos too. The characters are adorable, and sound track is excellent including bands like of The Cure and The Jam, with Sing Street songs composed by songwriter and musician, Gary Clark. A perfect way to end a sweet day!

I met Miko in a flower shop. I liked her the instant she said hello. How could I not be enchanted? Here was this woman, surrounded by the scents of freesia and sweet peas, talking about passion and Romanticism and art. And this was only our first conversation!

There were many to follow. We started meeting regularly for happy hours. We giggled a lot and shared personal stuff about our lives, as happy hour moments encourage one to do, but then we got deep… and vulnerable. We ventured into the topic of collaboration. Da-da-da dum!

Side note here…

My friend June, a fantastic thinker, visual artist, and master printmaker, has coined a phrase associated with artists trying to work together. She calls it ‘collaboration-itus.’ If you catch this creative disease, it’s chronic. You love it, you hate it, you love to hate it, you hate that you love it, and it’s addictive. Artists can cradle their work like their own children. We are protective, but we also like to play together. Playing is of course the fun part, but if there’s a fight on the playground, look out. Recovering, getting up from skinned knees and bruised egos can be hard. If you can get through the conflicts though, oh if you can, you can make years of beautiful work.

So Miko and I talked about collaboration. Though we both had been bruised, we liked and respected each other, so we decided to trust again.

Skip, hopscotch, and jump rope ahead six months…

In June 2016, Miko and I successfully taught a workshop combining paper flower sculpture and poetry influenced by flower symbolism and mythology. We were so inspired by working together that we decided to expand the workshop into a business.

Currently, we are busily making products and doing our research. Soon we will obtain the domain for our brand, establish our Facebook page, and begin our new adventure! ‘Collaboration-itus’ be damned! We have work to do!

In my last three or four posts for 2016, I’ve written about the art of conversation, and I’ve focused on old friends. Because some pretty exciting things have been happening with my current New York friends, I thought I’d shift from old to new, and from conversation to collaboration.

Over the winter, Benjamin and I started working with our friend and neighbor, Vita, or V as she likes to be called. At first, V was my voice teacher, and I loved her approach. She listened to me, focused on what I wanted to learn, and gently pushed me to try new things with my voice. One day, I asked her if she’d be interested in playing guitar with Benjamin. He was looking for some strings and a vocalist, and I had told him that V was cool, a very nice person. I thought it would be good for him to have this partnership, but V had other ideas.

So she came over, and we had a listening party to end all listening parties! We shared our work with her, and she shared hers with us. Several times, while she wasn’t looking, Benjamin and I would lean in close and mouth to each other, “Oh my god!” We were amazed by her voice and her writing!

That night, with the snow all sparkly around us, we made a pact. We would work together, not as a duet, but as a trio (thankfully, V insisted that I join). We began rehearsing and writing together, and this part of the collaboration was exciting! In case you’re curious, and why wouldn’t you be, here are a few ways in which we put it down…

1. V lies back against our sofa with her guitar and strums. She sings sounds, vowels sounds mostly, and she records her melodies when something strikes her. She sends these audio recordings to my phone (go technology!) and I try to write lyrics to match her pretty sounds. I email these back to her, and we begin.
2. Sometimes I write poetry that I think could work as lyrics, and I give it to V. I trust her with my work like a mother trusts a good nanny. She hears melodies for my words and sings them back to me. She never changes the meaning or the tone. In fact, often her singing brings out something in the lyrics that I didn’t realize was there, some deeper emotion or sentiment. She gets it.
3. Benjamin listens to V’s guitar melodies, and he always hears bass lines to compliment them. He plays them for her, she likes them, and then she sneakily gets Benjamin to sing harmonies too.
4. V encourages me to stretch beyond the poetic rhythm or line breaks that I hear and move my work more into song structure. She also tries to get me to sing, but I’m still shy. I know she won’t give up.
5. I say things, things that I think are kinda normal, and for some reason, V hears them as lyrics.
6. We all encourage each other to trust our imperfections, or to trust where our voices break (to quote my grad school thesis show).
7. We sip cocktails and listen to music we love and respect. Our collective taste is all over the place—from PJ Harvey to Tom Waits, Ryan Adams, Bon Iver, Emmylou Harris, Kate Bush, Sam Cooke, DeYarmond Edison, Michael Manring, Norah Jones and many, many more. We get tipsy, dance, laugh, and write some more!

Fast forward to six months of all of the above…

After rehearsals and lots of collaborative writing, we are now Born in Snow. We performed together in early summer 2016, and we spent the remainder of the season in the recording studio. Soon, we are going to release four singles, or snowflakes as we call them, so please check back in. We are excited to share! And for more on us, you can also visit us at: http://facebook.com/borninsnow. Thank you!

This is a special post going out to my dear friend, Mercedes. I write as a magic spell when someone I love needs a little something extra.

My friend Mercedes is a jewelry artist and a musician. She once told me, “it’s kinda like like jewelry is my major and music is my minor.” As an artist who often finds it hard to answer the popular (and kind of annoying) question,‘What do you do?,’ I appreciated Mercedes’s definition of herself. I’m kinda like a poetry major with minors in, I don’t know, paper and music?

Mercedes is from North Carolina, but she’s lived in the MidWest (Minnesota, like me) and obviously here in the Northeast. She’s road tripped across the Southwest (like me) and she’s fallen in love with Germany too. Our lives have had so many commonalities. We were wild as teenagers, and now we feel a constant restlessness, an intense need for quiet and space. The biggest thing we have in common is, well, Mercedes and I don’t really know where home is.

To her, North Carolina is one home and New York is the other, but the Southwest holds a planetary feeling for her too. It’s there that she feels like she can reach out her arms, know that there’s nothing but space for miles, and she can breathe. For me, it’s a toss up between Florida and Wisconsin, with heavy leanings towards central Europe. On that continent, I can disappear into languages I don’t understand and everything sounds like music.

Out of love for our families, she and I migrate. Currently, out of love for family, Mercedes has her feet and her heart in two places.

The only thing I can think to tell her is that the day will come when she will ground herself in her own music and her own craft. Her hands will be on beads and strings again. Her art supplies and her guitar will have a home in one house. I don’t know where that somewhere is yet, but I am willing Mercedes to find it… willing her to find it…

The artful conversations continued in March, when I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon in the city with my friend, Eve.

Eve amazes me. She’s a young mom with two daughters. Her girls are beautiful, smart, and a bit mischievous, my favorite kinds of kids. I like it when kids test their limits and question things. It reassures me that they are developing their critical thinking and creative skills, and this makes me hopeful.

While being a Mom is part of Eve, she is also an incredible teacher and a witty friend. We met while working at an international language school in DC. I remember walking past her classroom and seeing her students tossing a ball back and forth. Whoever held the ball had to answer a question in a full sentence. As someone who believes that we can retain information best by associating it with a physical movement, I loved this technique. I admired Eve instantly.

We started meeting on a regular basis to chat over tea or cocktails. Thinking back, we chose some great places to meet, namely Kramer’s Bookstore and Cafe in Dupont Circle and Tynan Coffee & Tea in Columbia Heights. I miss those places, and I miss my friend! In our conversations, I learned that, like most of my ESL teacher friends, she had lived or traveled all over the world—England, Sudan, Nepal, and Iceland, just to name a few places.

Eve and I liked to talk about travel, politics, issues in education, our students, and our families. We shared our favorite books. She suggested that I might like a series by the mysterious Elena Ferrante, “a pseudonymous Italian novelist whose true identity is not publicly known.” I was immediately intrigued, especially because this elusive person has been quoted as saying things like “books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.” I picked up a copy of the first book in her Neapolitan series entitled My Brilliant Friend. I have several other books going at once (my bad habit), but I can’t wait to begin!

Recently, because of Eve’s incredible generosity, I had the pleasure of staying at her house while she and her family were in Europe. I fell in love her book collection—everything from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott to 150 Movies You Need to See. The sunsets from her place were gorgeous, and her big old friendly kitchen table was perfect for my writing and research. The only thing missing was her, but I am comforted by the fact that she plans to take the train back up in the fall and meet me in the city again for another lunch date. Yay!

In February, we were treated with a visit from our charming friends, Allen and Nick. I love these two men.

Our friendship began when I met Allen as a co-worker at a language school in D.C. He and I bonded over similar teaching techniques and a geekish love of grammar and reading. We were honest with each other about the challenges of teaching ESL, and I was comforted every day by his sense of humor. I don’t know if it’s a regional thing or what, but the more I move around the States, the more I see how easily Southerners laugh, or how humor is a strength in people who have lived in the South.

Allen introduced me to Nick, and Nick teased me that same day. It was D.C., so of course, the conversation around the table turned to politics, specifically voting, or remembering which presidential election was our first. Being the oldest at the table, I hesitated sharing. Nick noted my hesitation, looked at me and said, “So, Nixon?” I retorted with a phrase I will not post here, but I was grinning as I said it. I grew up with brothers. Being teased was a measure of acceptance. I looked at Allen and said, “Ok. I like this guy.”

As we got to know them better, I saw how Nick and Allen could make each other laugh, and this was beautiful. Our friends were married last September, and Benjamin and I were lucky enough to attend their wedding. So much fun! Great food, fun dancing, and most of all, lovely people. We felt lucky to have been a part of such a memorable celebration.

Also, through a course of other lucky events, Benjamin and I were next door neighbors with Nick and Allen. Around their dinner table, or in their living room, we had many, many conversations. The ebb of flow of these numerous topics included: excellent food and beverages, travel dreams, tree houses, good books, good TV, families, and friendships.

On this February visit, we sipped French 75s. I attempted to make shrimp stew and a cherry pie for dessert. The stew turned out just ok, but thanks to Nick’s help, and a handy mashed potato masher, the pie was delicious! Nick and Allen met our new friends and neighbors, and as usual, they contributed their intelligent wit to the conversations. Our new friends were charmed indeed!

Later that night, a snowstorm forced our friends to leave early, but we brewed some coffee for the road, hugged them, and four hours later, they were home safe. In a few weeks, we will see Nick and Allen again back down in D.C., and we are counting the days!

“There’s an art to conversation.”

This is what my friend Laurel said as walked to a Polish restaurant in Berlin a few years ago. She had been talking about how she much she valued face-to-face conversations. Laurel had a cell phone, but she rarely used it. She had a computer, but she wasn’t attached to it, and she spent more time listening to vinyl records than watching TV. Laurel believed that certain aspects of the digital age, (particularly texting) were changing our ability to hold real conversations.

“There’s an art to the ebb and flow of it,” she said, “and you just can’t get that from typing.”

The women I met in Europe all shared this certain, graceful quality. Maybe it was the environment. All those cities with cafes everywhere, fostering the sit-down-and-talk, encouraging shared, social topics, encouraging active listening.

In honor of friends who truly know the art of conversation, I’d like to take the time, to highlight some recent conversations that I’ve had. It’s been a social six months, and for this I am grateful. I am also way behind with my blog writing and I need to catch up, so here goes…

In January, Irina came to visit us for a long weekend.

I’ve known Irina since 2002. She was my student in an Proficient ESL class, though she really didn’t need to study. Her command of English was excellent. She had moved to Chicago from Russia, and she wanted to make friends and practice conversation. During my two years working at Intrax International Institute, I had truly diverse classes—-students from Russia, China, Spain, Germany, Japan, Argentina, Thailand, Poland, Venezuela, Korea, and Cameroon, to name only a few. I fell in love with them. We held weekly Cafe Conversation sessions at the various coffee shops in the Loop. Apart from classes and cafe gatherings, my students would meet and have dinner at each other’s houses. They went on road trips together, and we even went on a hayride through a haunted apple orchard. This was one of the best jobs of my life, and it was meeting Irina that made it even better.

She’d come over to our apartment and sip vodka with me. At the time, our dining room was my studio, and I had my graduate thesis art projects strewn everywhere. Irina asked me questions about my work and about trends in American art. She asked me to read my poetry to her and share with her some of my favorite poets. I asked her about Russia, Russian poets, what she had studied there, and what she was fascinated by. She loved films and literature. With her, the art of conversation came easily.

After Benjamin and I left Chicago and began our restless moves everywhere, it was Irina who most consistently visited us. She came to North Carolina and D.C., and I was so excited to see her again in New York!

We met at her hotel, immediately ordered coffee, and began catching up. We kept talking through a lunch of delicious seafood tapas, and then we decided to go to The Algonquin for martinis. I love my friend for indulging this literary dream of mine. I have always wanted to go to The Algonquin to soak in the atmosphere that was once graced by Dorothy Parker and her crew.

What a lovely, lovely place!

When we walked in, I asked the concierge to direct me to wherever Dorothy Parker had a drink. “Oh honey,” he said, “Ms. Parker got drunk all over this place, so really you could sit anywhere, but you might enjoy the Blue Room.”

Irina and I took his advice. And wow! I highly recommend the Blue Room for an afternoon sip and conversation.

My friend and I talked about Russian poets and writers. She shared her theories on Russian politics. I spoke about the positive and dangerous nature of the American Dream. I love talking with my friend, because while she sees the political movement (or stagnation) of the world, she sees this holistically, in terms of the art that cultures make (or don’t make) to reflect the events of the time. I love how she measures our progress (or regression) by how we respond creatively. I learned more about her grandchildren, her son and daughter-in-law, her parents, and her youth. I shared stories about my family.

It was a lovely exchange. As we sat there enveloped in the blue light of an historic bar, I felt that back in Berlin, Laurel would be proud. I felt like the spirits of Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin writers were smiling, and most of all, I felt at home, sipping a martini and talking to one of my most beloved friends.

No one makes pies like my mother.

Yes, yes, everyone most likely says this about their mothers or grandmothers, but I’m convinced that my mom’s fruit pies could win competitions. Really.

It seems like I’m always looking for a good piece of pie, and I rarely find one that tastes as delicious as hers. So far, the closest contestant was at a family-owned apple orchard in northern Illinois called Quig’s.

Benjamin and I used to visit Quig’s regularly. We’d bike at nearby Moraine Hills State Park, and then treat ourselves to coffee and apple pie with homemade cinnamon ice cream. We even took my Dad there when he visited, and all three of us still reminisce about the taste.

I’ve decided that it’s time I try my own hand at pie making, but I do not want to venture into this task alone. So for Valentine’s weekend, when our dear friends Allen and Nick are here for a visit, we shall make pie! And we will of course be using my mom’s recipe. I hope we can do it justice. Time and tasting will tell.

When I was little, one of my favorite toys was my Fisher Price Xylophone. I played those colorful keys up and down for hours, singing loud and learning my first octave.

When I got a little older, my brother made me a small, wooden xylophone which is still in my family home in Florida. It’s a beautiful reddish wood, fragile with a gorgeous tone.

Even later, I bought myself a full xylophone with accompanying sticks and a stand. I don’t play this as much as I should. Benjamin and I have talked about incorporating xylophone lines into The Dwindlers… just little sprinkles of sound, but so far, I haven’t taken the initiative. Perhaps this is why he gave me a glockenspiel for Christmas, as further encouragement, one more try, three’s a charm. It’s turquoise, and it twinkles, and I love it!

Indeed, it is my hope that very soon I will compose some melodies on both my glocken and my xylophone. Happy Tunes to come!

How do you know if someone is an absolute Scrabble geek?

It’s easy. They say they want to play in the first place.

And how do you know if they are good or not?

This is also easy. They say they want to play in the first place, and they feign humility regarding their skills.

My friends, Marie and Mercedes, love Scrabble, and they are good! We have officially established a Tuesday ritual of tea and this classic word game, and I have to mention that at first, we were polite.

The conversation went like this:

Michelle: So, for this first round, we don’t necessarily need to keep score. We can just play for fun.

Marie: Well, ok. I mean, I’m not really a competitive person.

Michelle: Oh, me neither.

Here’s where Marie and I were totally lying to one another. Both of us went to Catholic school, where, if truth be told, there is an absolute breeding ground for (mostly healthy) competitive behavior. In Catholic school, you will not find the “feel-good-everybody wins-yay!” philosophy. Nope. When you grow up with games like Red Rover, Dodge Ball, and King of the Mountain, you learn… it’s do or die, and you push yourself to be the best you can be.

Marie and I tried this happy approach to Scrabble for our first game, but we were both mentally keeping score. At one point, Marie put down a great word, and she had the honesty to finally say, “Well, if we were keeping score that would have been a good one. I mean triple word score and everything.” Heh heh.

I had to laugh. Marie was a Scrabble player with strategy on the brain. She knew to add an ‘s’ to make something plural, and then build from there with a word beginning with ‘s’ to increase her score. Mercedes knew words that I had never heard of like: ‘kiter,’ ‘mos,’ and ‘qua.’ Both ladies knew not to set up opponents in positions where they could get the coveted double and triple word scores. For the second game, we did keep score, and it was neck-in-neck until the very end. So much fun!

The best part of the night was when Marie suggested that next time, instead of tea, that maybe we could drink vodka lemonades.  Mercedes and I couldn’t have agreed with her more.